Tuesday 5 February 2013

Links round up (5th Febuary)











Here are some links that we at Lashings thought to share with you:

Here's a graphic on ‘how to deal with being called out’ and how to react to it in a charitable and open way.


Here we find a testimony from a nurse who was employed by Atos, the privatised company responsible for assessing people in the UK for disability benefits. The nurse speaks of the horrific experiences she had in being told to work towards targets, and not to criticise management for any decisions that are disagreeable effectively compromising a nurse’s ethical commitment to patients. [Trigger warning: DWP assessment issues]


Marianne from oxJane.com speaks about her views on a t-shirt sold on the website of Australian actress Rebel Wilson that effectively is ‘skinny shaming’. As Wilson is someone lauded by fat acceptance circles, the implication of ‘skinny shaming’ is unhelpful as it implies that ‘there can only be one’ ideal and acceptable body type. Marianne’s view is that body acceptance is about accepting people of many body types, and that donuts are for everyone. [potential TW: discussion of body issues, harassment]


The ‘biblical’ view that’s younger than the Happy Meal: From the Patheos progressive Christian blog, this is a *very* interesting piece of social history detailing the way in which evangelical churches in the US restructured their positions on abortion and contraception from the late 70s to the late 80s. An excerpt:

“In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal. Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says… They’ll be a little fuzzy on where, exactly, the Bible says this, but they’ll insist that it does.
That’s new. If you had asked American evangelicals that same question the year I was born you would not have gotten the same answer.”

Interesting piece by s.e. smith on their explanation of why ou does not adhere to the label ‘feminist’ because ‘of the insistence of policing the label’.*


Verso Books report that the Anarchist bookshop, Freedom has been firebombed. Freedom is also the home of Freedom Press and hosts spaces for meetings of many radical and anarchist interests.



A piece by Omar Shahid on the phenomenon of many white British women undertaking the Shahada ritual, which is a requisite to membership to the Islamic faith. Shahid concludes that this increase of women who have identified with Islam may challenge perceptions of the faith group.


A topic close to my heart! A petition to cease advertising children’s toys in a gendered manner, and thus reinforcing gendered roles and stereotypes.


[TW: oppressive langauge in relation to sexuality and mental health] Beth Cox on the Power of Words. The overly casual use of words has an impact that many people don’t realise that can be difficult to overturn negative preconceptions. Cox gives the example of how the word ‘gay’ is used, as well as terms relating to mental health conditions that are used to perpetuate uninformative and demeaning preconceptions about those conditions.


Indian minister for women and child development Varsha Gaikwad announces that the government will include issues of relevance to sex work and gender identity.



*editorial - gender pronouns corrected

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